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With Great Power?

I just saw Lee’s “documentary” on Epix. Clearly this was a promotional piece for Lee and his Pow! entertainment company, not an historical examination of Lee and his life by any stretch of the imagination. Jack was mentioned a few times which was nice to see, but as you can imagine, there was no real substance to any of the segments on Jack.

I could list a 100 things in the film that are ridiculous, but I’ll only point out one thing. Lee talks about how he moved out to California in the 1970s because he liked the weather out there. Then Lee talks about how his master plan to use television to promote the Marvel properties like Spider-man in the 70s was a success — lots of people learned about characters like Spider-man thanks to his presence on the west coast. Then the film cuts to a clip from the Spider-man cartoon from the late 1960s.

Marvel had already been doing television projects before Lee moved to California, but the With Great Power film makes it appear that famous 1967 Spider-man cartoon was the result of Lee’s move to California in the early-1970s.

The film has lots of other moments like this. It’s a mishmash that looks like it was thrown together quickly, for a target audience of probably 10-year-olds — I guess Lee’s Pow! is trying to attract new readers to Lee’s new projects.

Funny to watch Lee and his wife bicker in the film. Imagine what goes on off-camera! Interesting to see Lee drop his fake salesman persona with his wife. After watching this, anyone out there REALLY think Lee’s wife would have let Lee quit his job for Goodman in 1961 to “write a novel?”

One thing I did learn from this documentary: with great power comes the power to produce a “documentary” about yourself that’s really an infomercial promoting yourself and your new company.